


Sharp Intentions

by dreaminglestrade



Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Anxiety, F/M, It's A Process, New Girl - Freeform, Other, because he is in the beginning, damaging truths, unfriendly Shane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-09 11:23:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20994002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreaminglestrade/pseuds/dreaminglestrade
Summary: Eve is the new girl in town, city child turned farmer. Everyone is excited to meet her. Except for Shane.





	Sharp Intentions

**Author's Note:**

> So funny story, I wasn't intending to post much of Eve's actual experiences in-game. I was planning on sticking to the ice scene and my spooky Stardew Valley fic, but this year, I have met really lovely people who have inspired me to be brave and their encouragement helped me roll this bugger out in under a week. Thank you, vive. Thank you, rum. You are both absolutely wonderful.
> 
> Not based in the spook verse, but may have tints of it should I continue.
> 
> It has occurred to me many times while playing SDV that Shane's original comments, which we all know were stated for certain reasons, would absolutely send a generally nervous person absolutely careening.
> 
> Meet Eve.

Eve had _never_ been good at introductions.

The list of names Lewis had given her felt more like a paperweight in her pocket than a harmless collection of possible friends. It felt so unnecessarily forced, to go poking about town prodding people for their names, chirping one back, and scratching off each person as if they were some part of her to-do list.

_“Oh! Aren't you the one who just moved in?”_

Eve’s hands already buzzed with nerves and she pulled her eyes back towards the road to find a young redhead peering back at her from behind a pair of glasses. Oh Yoba, did they all know? Did she have a bobbing arrow above her head, a sign stamped on her back, announcing her recent arrival?

Why had she thought she could handle a small town?

The girl standing before her waved a hand nervously, looking concerned, and Eve struggled to respond. Talk. Answer. SPEAK.

“Eve, I’m Eve. It’s nice to meet you.”

Within the next hour, she was flooded with so many names she ran out of ways to remember them. Shy, young redhead- red like her name, Penny. Elliot, two l’s, fancy like his hair. The brown-haired kid spinning a football around like it was nothing and insisting their were going to be great friends- Alex. Yeah, simple enough name for a jock.

She felt a little bad, picking up old assumptions, falling back on stereotypes, but each person cramped her in closer until it was hard to remember they were all separate people. Hard to remember that she was out in the open, out in the country. It felt crowded, in the way the city had never been. Nameless faces were easy to ignore, easy to pass over and move through. This- 

Alex. Harvey. Lewis. Penny. Maru. Elliot. Russ? No... Gus. _Gus_. And Clint. And Pam. And-

“Hey!”

Caught up in her thoughts, Eve stumbled into the figure slugging his way through a set of automatic doors. The hiss of cold, artificial air rushed over her eardrums and she looked up as the Joja Mart logo slid neatly back into place. Joja. When had they gotten one of those here? How far had she walked? Who- oh.

“I’m so sorry! I got… distracted.” The man was staring at her, looking more than a little annoyed at the interruption to his day and she shuffled her feet, trying not to glance at the ground. Purple hair- like Abby! But no, they hadn’t met, she didn’t remember the slouch or the torn jacket or the strained cheeks.

“I don’t think we’ve met. Hi, I’m Eve.”

There was a long moment of silence as she offered him her hand to shake. The man stood still, his mouth set in a frown as he pressed his hands into his pockets.

_“I don’t know you. Why are talking to me?”___

_ _Eve felt an icy wave crash over her. The air in her chest stuttered to a stop, rattled down into her rib cage. Her hand dropped back to her side, looping its way around to her back._ _

_ _“Yeah. That’s- why. Thought I should-”_ _

_ _One of the man’s eyebrows lifted into his bangs and his scowl deepened. Her cheeks burned and she had the urge to clap her hands over her ears to hide the deep red she knew was blossoming there._ _

_ _“You’re probably busy.”_ _

_ _Her voice was soft, but it didn’t seem to matter. With a long sigh, the man turned back towards the bridge. She watched as he shrugged his hand back at her with a grunt. She wondered if it was too early to go back to the farm, too early to scrap the rest of the names on her list and hibernate for the next ten years._ _

_ _Shame on her, thinking everyone would want to say hello, that every single individual she came across would be dedicated to a warm welcome and a blinding smile. She was just some city girl, poking her nose where it shouldn’t be and assuming she could fit into their charming, long-locked community._ _

_ _Still. He could have lied to her. She wouldn’t have minded._ _

_ _*_ _

_ _It felt a bit like cheating sometimes. Gathering favor with a box of vegetables or a shiny rock. “Willy, look what I found! Here, take this floppy blob of scales I just caught from your backyard!” Giving someone something they could pull out of the earth themselves, taking anything from the earth at all and presenting it like some expensive prize… it felt akin to a child showing off a bug to his fawning mother._ _

_ _Good job, Eve, what else can you find?_ _

_ _But after a few weeks, it became easier. She was proud of the strange batch of parsnips she dug up from the soil, seeking Pam out because she knew she liked them, not because she knew she’d be grateful. A couple weeks into spring, she’d scoured the library for a book on pruning because Evelyn liked flowers, right? The rose she managed to procure from one of her bushes sometime after had the woman glowing and Eve clutched onto that warmth like it was sacred and fleeting. _ _

_ _Perhaps the fact they were essentially exchanging tokens should have cheapened the feeling, but intentions felt cleaner in Pelican Town than they ever had in Zuzu. It felt less artificial rooting around for mushrooms for Leah than handing off a tin of store-bought brownies to her coworkers. Bob, nice job with those algorithms. Man, customers, am I right? Brownie? No, they’re not gluten free._ _

_ _There was a difference. Even if it just meant she’d enjoy the ten minutes she spared to chat instead of counting the seconds before she could go back to work._ _

_ _And then there was Shane._ _

_ _She’d learned his name quickly enough from the rest of the town, not to mention Marnie’s hastened apologies regarding her “nephew’s behavior”. Eve could convince herself that maybe he’d had a shitty day at a shitty job the day they’d met. Maybe she’d stepped over boundaries and forced her way into some kind of greeting. It was an unfair tactic, no matter how accidental it had been, and she’d have probably acted the same way had their roles been reversed._ _

_ _But there she was, first offering him the berries she’d plucked from beside her pond, and he’d blinked at her but accepted with a quiet thank you. Then turned and left without a word. She’d strung together a small pile of glittering stones- perhaps he was more into rocks- and received a blatant, thin-lipped “thanks”. Her attempt at asking him how his day had been garnered nothing more than an exasperated, “-really?”._ _

_ _Eventually, in an endeavor that felt more like desperate clambering than any real gift-giving, she’d presented him with a jar of fresh honey, her arms burning from the bee stings but her pride swelling at the golden glow of the glass between her palms._ _

_ _“Don’t know if you even like honey, but it’s fresh-”_ _

_ _ _“How many times do I have to tell you to leave me alone?”_ _ _

_ _The words were a right hook to her gut. She winced, feeling them bruise their way up her stomach, and Eve took a small step backwards, her hand holding the jar still outstretched._ _

_ _This time, her eyes darted down between her feet, the chill climbing up her spine reminding her she didn’t want to look Shane in the eye._ _

_ _There was a long silence, a moment where she tried to speak past the knot in her throat, shrug it off- no problem, really, it’s fine- but after a moment of fruitless attempts, she felt his hand pressing the honey back towards her. There was a groan, caught somewhere between exhaustion and annoyance, and he was scuffing his feet, gesturing at her like a tangled marionette._ _

_ _“I can’t. Thanks, but I can’t. Just-”_ _

_ _“Yeah.” Eve swallowed around the glue in her mouth, pressed her tongue to the back of her teeth. She lifted her head, brushing the bangs from her face, and forced her lips into a smile._ _

_ _‘Not everyone is going to like you. Put on your big girl boots.’_ _

_ _“I’ll leave you alone.”_ _

_ _*_ _

_ _It was harder than expected. In the city, it was easy to avoid someone- so many bookstores and theaters and alleys to tuck yourself into when you saw them coming. _ _

_ _In Pelican Town, there were just houses. The clinic maybe, and Pierre’s, but they’d all be talking if she started ducking into places for no apparent reason._ _

_ _Small towns talked._ _

_ _And Shane was everywhere._ _

_ _For all his rumored reclusive, terse tendencies, he was always there on her route, walking to or from work. He was always in Pierre’s, grabbing a case of beer or selling eggs or skimming the aisles. He was always in the saloon, and how was she supposed to talk to people there when she could feel his eyes burrowing into her any time she made an appearance?_ _

_ _And suddenly, Eve was hiding again._ _

_ _“Hey, you okay? You’re awful quiet.”_ _

_ _Leah blinked back at her from behind a mug of Gus’s finest cider and Eve downed her own before responding._ _

_ _“I’m fine. Long week. I’ll see you later, okay?”_ _

_ _She recognized the look of concern in her friend’s eye, but the woman was kind enough to let it go._ _

_ _Eve turned to the bar one last time and caught Gus’s sleeve. As the bartender lifted bushy eyebrows and flashed her a wide grin, Eve nodded towards Shane. Slipping the man a five, she lifted one finger and pointed to the beer tap._ _

_ _She ducked outside before Gus was finished pouring it._ _

_ _Happy birthday, Shane._ _

_ _*_ _

_ _She loved evenings in the fall._ _

_ _It was easy to get lost in the endless rows of trees, to let the smell of pine needles and scorched bark settle into your senses until the world drifted back a little._ _

_ _At night, Eve could wander down the paths on her property and breathe. She could close her eyes and hear the bats overhead, the wind turning over dust and leaves, owls in the distance, and the crunch of twigs beneath her boots. The soft quiet would envelop her like an embrace._ _

_ _She’d discovered some time before that the best fish came from the deeper parts of the forest, in the middle of the night when all was still and silent. In those hours, Eve could rebuild herself, outside of the walls of the farmhouse, the comfortable safety of her farm. She could shrink her world to the simple bounce of the fishing bobber in the water. She could breathe deeply and be _alone_ to prepare herself again for the next day, for hard labor and the inevitable trek into town. The inevitable requirement of constant acknowledgement._ _

_ _Tonight, however, she found that she wasn’t alone._ _

_ _Eve stopped short at the start of the dock, going stiff as she recognized another figure had already claimed it. Her lantern swung back noisily as her momentum shifted and she cursed underneath her breath as a silhouetted head turned towards her._ _

_ _Dark hair. Scruffy jacket. The glint of metal and the tiniest whiff of something sour._ _

_ _Shane._ _

_ _“Sorry!” Eve’s feet shuffled beneath her as she rummaged in her mind for another place to be. Anywhere but here, where her own _presence_ seemed to bother a person and he couldn’t bother to spare her the time of day to shrug it off._ _

_ _“-didn’t know you were here. I’ll leave.” There it was, that familiar wrenching beneath her skin that made it feel like all her parts were being twisted into a mess of organs. Something thick and heavy closed off her throat and with a wild gesture backwards, Eve turned on her heel to go._ _

_ _“Hey, wait, come on-” Shane’s voice was loud in the quiet of the woods and there was a desperation to his tone she couldn’t recall from before. Desperate was not a word she tended to associate with the angry, disappointed man that was Shane Daniels._ _

_ _ _“-Eve.”_ _ _

_ _Her name on his tongue shouldn’t have changed anything. But somewhere in the back of her mind, she reasoned that he’d never found it necessary to call her by name before. You never spoke directly to someone you didn’t want around._ _

_ _Swallowing around the knot in her throat, Eve ventured a glance back. Shane remained where he was, legs stretched out over the water, but he was tugging at the plastic of the case beside him. With a grunt, he pulled a can of beer free and held it out to her._ _

_ _Yoba, was this what a truce looked like now?_ _

_ _Eve stayed where she was for another moment, feeling the hinges in her knees rock forward and back in uncertainty. If this was a trick, some sick test to see if she really understood what “leave me alone” meant, she was going to fail it entirely._ _

_ _Slowly, she made her way back down the dock until she stood next to him and heavens, she’d never felt like she was towering over him, but now-_ _

_ _Her hand wound around the can he offered and Eve slowly lowered herself down to sit beside him._ _

_ _“I’m sorry I was an ass.”_ _

_ _Eve’s fingers hovered over the tab of the can and she wondered if maybe she’d made it to the dock alone after all, had hit her head, and was stumbling around in some daydream of what-could-have-been. Interesting choice of words, imaginary Shane had._ _

_ _The can hissed angrily as she opened it and without a second thought, she took a long gulp of beer._ _

_ _Horrid stuff. Thank Yoba she’d gone to enough parties to appreciate it._ _

_ _“I don’t think I’ve ever pissed someone off so much by just being _around_. I wasn’t taking the hint, I guess.”_ _

_ _There was a long silence then. Words hung in the air, leagues of them, all unspoken but hanging barely out of reach. She supposed he wasn’t really the type to share. Neither was she and there was a time she might appreciate the silence, but now? She’d hated passing the weeks afraid of running into the man, angry at herself for caring, and yet too timid about it to risk stepping on his toes._ _

_ _But she hated the idea of a stalemate just as much as she hated his disdain. It wouldn’t be a resolution, just a long-standing white flag filled with awkward moments and misconceptions._ _

_ _“How about I give you some space-” She spoke slowly, mulling out the terms carefully, and lifted her beer in an exaggerated rendition of a toast, “-and you say hello now and again? Have a conversation with me. Allow me to exist on the same plane.”_ _

_ _Shane’s eyebrows lifted, and this time Eve’s stomach jumped in the vain hope that she’d amused him. After a moment, he lifted his own can and tapped it against hers._ _

_ _It was strange, how such a small victory could stitch such traitorous threads of hope into a moment._ _

_ _“Deal.”_ _


End file.
